The Experience of Death

We should prepare for our Hereafter in this world itself. We can only reap the consequences of our previous actions in the Hereafter. There will be no prospect of a new beginning there.

Nine-time Wimbledon champion Martina Navratilova was regarded as the greatest female tennis players of all time. When she was 55, she went to a doctor for a medical consultation. After being examined, she was told that cancer had spread throughout her lungs and it had reached the secondary stage. Describing the doctor’s diagnosis, she said: “It was such a shock for me. It was my 9/11.”

She said this because death had started appearing close to her. But the stage after death, is more difficult than that. Death, in the words of the Quran, is total severance from the world (2:166). After death, man arrives in another world, which from every angle is very different from the present world. After death, two serious realities are suddenly laid bare. One is that, it is not possible to return now to the pre-death period, where one had made a world of one’s own. Secondly, one cannot make another world for oneself in the post-death period. This realization will bring man eternal disappointment and eternal regret, and no experience is as distressful as eternal despair and remorse.

In the present world, if one chance is lost here, one gets a second chance by which one can transform one’s lost chance into success once again. This is not possible in the Hereafter. Receiving another chance in the Hereafter is just not possible. The first chance or the second chance or the third chance are the possibilities only in the present world. The next world is completely different from the present world. One can only reap the consequences of one’s previous actions in the Hereafter, without there being any prospect of a new beginning. We should, therefore, prepare for our Hereafter in this world itself.